Dawkins cancelled

I’m late to this story. It only came up when I saw some of Tim Minchin’s fans on Facebook roast him for accepting a Richard Dawkins Award.

I’m curious to hear some thoughts on this from a Christian perspective.

It seems to me there is some grand irony here. Dawkins also misuses scientific discourse to make spurious metaphysical claims about the non-existence of God. That has made him a poster-boy of atheism.

The AHA is explicitly atheist, and humanism in general is about trying to build a moral framework out of pure reason and by appeal to science. They are perhaps not quite as obviously committing the same domain error as Dawkins. But I should think from a Christian perspective they are both trying to make themselves as gods, in the sense of Genesis 3:5. And now they find themselves at odds, for having come to competing erroneous positions.

Your last point is a none issue. What is clear from genesis is we are supposed to be able to distinguish between good and evil whether god is involved or not. Jesus commandments gave us a more precise set of rules but the core framework comes from what we are not the bible. We are in essence on this aspect now like God but unlike God we are also sinners and give in to temptation. This means that whilst morality will existe without God, it will have tendency of being misguided. So I have no problem with with what the AHA are doing, I just think its unlikely that morality without God would not lead to the morality we have today in the west which based on Christian morality but to one which is probably much less tolerant.

It also worth noting that Richard Dawkins is the poster child of new atheism. Whilst most wont make the distinction with atheism, their are many atheist that are highly critical of the new atheist movement in part because his arguments are getting seriously close to scientism. To an extent new atheism is to atheism what islamiste are to Muslims, or groups like Westboro Baptist Church are to Christians.

As for the “canceling”, I hate that buzz word. Its presented as an action of free speech, when in reality it a form of free speech that people claiming its not often use to chase people they don’t like away from their channels. Its also to defend something intent when that something never had that intent. Unless moderators green light me, I’m not going to give examples here as they could be contraversial and be political.

On the other hand, I don’t like removing peoples titles for unrelated topics, for example I feel the Henry Ford should be recognized as the man the popularized chain production even though he was an anti-semite and apparently quite a despicable man. But this case might be different. If the objective of the AHA is to prove modern morality through logic and science then yes Richard Dawkins actions kinda go in the opposite way. They go more in the direction I’d expect them to go without the guidance of God but that is irrelavent if that not what the AHA believe and stand for.

So let me put this fair. A guy who explicity advocates for militant atheism and have made distrubing comments about some millions of people and how he wants to “eradicate” them was about to take THE HUMANIST OF THE YEAR TITLE.? This world has gone so far away from sanity that is actually scary

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Friendly reminder, let’s make sure we keep the conversation away from issues surrounding transgenderism, etc.

Conversations about cancel culture generally are fine so long as they don’t become a vehicle for political discourse.

Thanks everyone.

Good luck with that. I cop to atheism with the necessary caveats, but I think there is way more to humanity than science and reason. As for moral frameworks I’m fine with our evolved standard where our treatment of each other is concerned. But when it comes to meaning and fulfillment, science and reason cannot take you the whole way.

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Young Dickie may well be scientifically, rationally correct, as he is in The God Delusion of course, but his tone is bound to offend with little, if any, gain; it does more harm than good. Unlike TGD.

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I never really take anything Dawkins says as an attack. The majority of his negative comments towards Christians seems especially directed towards YEC of which many I agree with. I also am self aware of the ridiculousness of faith to not be offended by “ people and their imaginary god”’comments.

I guess ultimately I disagree with cancel culture over a handful of statements. I think he’s a brilliant scientist and over all I enjoy his personality when I see it.

As for the comments at hand that this particular attack is over I think he should have been aware those people would have jumped on it and begin canceling him and removing his award.

Funniest part of me was his fear of being cast in with the bigots over there because I also hate being cast on their side over anything I say that is not on the far other side of them.

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I just read the article. Not sure why there is any fuss.

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